Uncover how money affects views of their personal and professional identities

DELIVERABLES

User Research Profiles

Final Presentation of Findings

Team

Aaron McKenzie, Eduardo Franco, Ishan Sain

Advisors

Catherine Lovazzano, Alexandra Michaelides

Skills

Generative Research, Mind Mapping, Empathy, Storytelling

timeline

6 weeks

Research Process

define and discover

How is Sex Work Defined?

Surrogate Partner Therapy

Porn

Domination (“domming”)

Camera modeling (“camming”)

Erotic modeling

Sugar Baby

Erotic Massage

Sex work is often stigmatized and reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes. However, stories from individuals within this community paint a more complex picture.

We sourced research participants through our social networks, developed a discussion guide, and interviewed six participants who self-identified as sex workers. Each participant had a unique story to share and often worked in multiple roles across the industry. These roles include:

Key Questions We Asked

How do you manage your finances?

How do you navigate traditional financial systems that may not recognize your work as legitimate or legal?

Using Mind Maps to Draw Out Larger Themes

In addition to interviews, we asked participants to generate mind maps in order to explore other feelings, motivations, and behaviors not previously discussed. Participants then highlighted areas of stress (in red), areas that inspire and bring hope (in blue), and explained their drawings. We then compiled our interview notes into one-page synopses on each participant.

OUR research participants

Note: we have changed the names of our six research participants to protect their identities.

interview Summaries

Synthesizing Our Findings

Sex work is like freelancing with no formal institutions to help you

Together as a team, we reviewed our interview notes and mind maps, then used affinity clustering to categorize the notes among common themes. This helped us identify rich insights about our participants in terms of their financial practices, long-term goals, and perceptions of their identity as sex workers. We told their story in a final presentation that covered these major insights:

INSIGHT #1

Sex workers access financial and professional knowledge through their community

INSIGHT #2

Sex work is like freelancing with no formal institutions (like H&R Block, banks, or accountants) to help you.

Sex workers often face barriers when interacting with traditional financial systems so many develop their own personal practices to work around these systems.

INSIGHT #3

More than just money, sex work is also about forging an identity around the body, sexuality, and empowerment.

KEY INSIGHT

Sex workers are required to constantly negotiate internal and external power dynamics because of the legal and social taboos related to who they are and what they do.

Power is the underlying factor connecting sex work to money, access, acceptance, and identity.

Each individual we interviewed navigates having more power in certain areas and less power in other areas. For them, their sense of power is not fixed; it’s constantly changing depending on the context of their situation.

Lessons Learned

Next Steps

Although this was primarily a user research project, if given more time I would:

Design a service/product specifically for sex workers and other marginalized populations working in the legal “gray area”

Reflection

This was the ultimate practice of developing empathy and active listening. Each participant we interviewed shared very personal, sometimes emotional stories and it was our duty to create a safe, respectful space. Anonymity was of utmost importance.

We also recognized that there was a self-selection bias. This particular group of participants would consider themselves empowered by sex work and were willing to volunteer for our design research project, but we must acknowledge that there is also a more vulnerable subset of sex workers who do not share this experience.